i am contributing to the debate but no one will answer/reslove deans paradoxto find a way out of the dean paradoxwhat the first bird mate with

You know what the first bird mated with or that first iris pollinated with?Certainly we all do not know for we never existed during those times. All we can just do is to make assumptions that "it must happened" or things must happened in such a way. So why do we have to bother ourselves what the first "anything" mated/pollinated with? what's the sense anyway? just focus on what we have at the present. If perhaps we could have a time machine to let us travel 4.5 billion years ago maybe we could fill in the gaps. Try having a "virgil-like" craft that traveled somewhat in the memories of this planet although in that case it won't bring you to your desired destination as if you wanted to see what exactly happened to this planet way back to its formation; it would bring you to your own destruction or simply, madness.

---Just one act of random kindness at a time and you can change the world---

Genesis says "He created them male and female..." in ch.2. The scriptures were around long before Darwin or Dean.

One thing I know, Colin Leslie Dean is asking a real question that challenges evolution to it's core. How did asexual become sexual--so that at the same time one line was evolving useless sex cells for the male (to be) and the other line was developing useless sex cells for the female (to be), when natural selection would have been working against half evolved sex cells and organs.

Or did it happen suddenly? It all just happened at the same time and the same place so that a male and a female were developed and mated. Preposterous!

Or if God guided the process of evolution, then why have evolutionists been teaching unguided mutation? If God used evolution, something out of nothing--why is it so hard to believe that he created them spontaneously?

Gamila is right mcar, your position is not a good one. We cannot ignore the history if we want to understand our world. But that is the only thing that (s)he is right about.As for the paradox it cannot be solved because as I tried to explain, the vision of species as a static object in the world is very wrong. Species genus and so on are just convenient ways to classify the world and to communicate about the living organisms. but the notion is so full of problems when we want to define it in our sequencing age, that some people want to get rid of the notion altogether. And I must that as a bacteriologist, I can understand that. But this will not change anything to the Theory of evolution by natural selection because species are not like drawers where organisms belong or not, but rather a snapshot in the dynamic ever branching and crossing branches of the tree of life.

Patrick

Science has proof without any certainty. Creationists have certainty without
any proof. (Ashley Montague)

gamila:The Australian philosopher colin leslie dean notes a paradox in evolutionary theorysimilar to the paradox of Cain in the bible

The first humans Adam and Eve gave birth to Cain and Ableso who did Cain mate with

Okay, I understand you Patrick. Although it seems that he/she just only wants to challenge us if we could really resolve the paradox and as what you have said, it can’t be for certain apparent reason. After all for the sake of debate and intellectual discussion I guess.

After Cain left the Lord’s presence he went to a place where he met his wives. Of course these women are different from Eve, his mother. Now it would appear that in Ch.1:4, God really created humans, both male and female and He even told them to be fertile and multiply. What I am thinking here is that, in the Ch.2:2-3, Adam whom God created out of clay was separately formed from those humans as stated in the Ch.1:4. Now, since Cain went to a place farther from where his parents stayed, he met women which could be one of those humans created by God as stated in the Chapter 1:4. Now, if we could recall, God's chosen people are from the descendants of Adam. What about those who are not, certainly they are not. As I believe, the Bible contains lot of mysteries that appear to be parable for the most of us.

I know there's really nothing wrong in knowing where did living things originate from. It would give a clear picture of the past. But until now, it's still the same argument among evolutionists regarding the formation of life and everything presented remains to be a theory after all. Upon posting my previous post before this one, my feelings perhaps concentrated on my tiredness upon hearing/reading redundant questions and ideas in regards to our origin. That's the reason why I might have said those things there. My apologies if I have appeared to be rude there.

Going back to the story in Genesis, I know that the notion there might not be accepted by most of us since the forum is intended for scientific discussions with the exploration and application of facts or evidences and when we start presenting ideas from the Bible, most of us do really asks for evidences proving every notion identified there, just as most of the evolutionists may always start to argue with. It was clearly written there that God said to His living creations to be fertile and multiply in number. They were fertile so reproduction is possible, we just don't know if the way they multiplied was through asexual or sexual means.

---Just one act of random kindness at a time and you can change the world---

Species genus and so on are just convenient ways to classify the world and to communicate about the living organisms. but the notion is so full of problems when we want to define it in our sequencing age,

as colin leslie dean has pointed out biologists dont know what species or phylum arethus biology is not a scienceabout15956.html

ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species"However, the exact definition of the term "species" is still controversial, particularly in prokaryotes,[2] and this is called the species problem.[3"

"Although a phylum is often spoken of as if it were a hard and fast entity, no satisfactory definition of a phylum exists"

With out a definition of these terms then biologists are really talking nonsense for with out definitions to locate and identify the things they talk about they are really not talking about anything at all If the biologist talks about say speciation or this species proving natural selection but cant tell you what a species or phylum is then he is talking meaningless nonsense. He could as easily said certain gibbles prove natural selection but with out knowing what a gibble is the claim is meaningless

Thus it can be seen that biology is not a science as its classificatory systems cannot identify the objects of its science if it cannot identify the objects of its investigations it cannot be a scienceall it is is a meaningless array of terms which dont identify anything

Sexual reproduction appeared as an extra way of recombination for asexual organisms. The first organisms didn't simply abandon asexual reproduction but developed a parallel system. The "useless sex cells for the male/female (to be)" AFJ is so worried about quite likely served another purposes before they were used in sexual reproduction, just like it often happens during evolution (fins were first used for swimming, later for crawling in the mud and finally for walking etc). At the moment my best guess is that they were specialist cells used for binary fission, or some more advanced version of it. And there did not have to be a sudden emergence of both a male and female of the first sexually reproducting organism, because the first such organisms were initially able to produce "general purpose gametes" with no specific sex, then both male and female gametes. Only later emerged "male" and "female" when one lost the ability to produce the other gamete type.

You can see even in today's world that there are many species that can reproduce both sexually and asexually, and there are also many organisms that can produce both male and female gametes.

And for gamila, the first bird mated with the last reptilebird because the species were so closely related. The bird gene turned out to be dominant, so all the chicks of the bird+reptilebird became birds and voilá!

Of course, I cannot say for certain if this was the case because it was quite a long time ago, but it probably happened in a similar manner. Just because I cannot explain something completely doesn't mean it did not happen or is untrue. I am not an evolutionary biologist anyway, so maybe one of the specialists in the field actually could explain this in a more precise manner.

That's because Canalon speaks about different thing than I do: he simply stated that if you view species as a strict category (which is how you stubbornly keep doing), it is by default a paradox (which is, by definition, something that cannot be solved). However, if you read further, Canalon says that if you view species as a dynamic system without clear-cut boundaries, it is not a paradox any more. And that is what I tried to explain with that bird/birdreptile example. And by calling for a specialist to explain it better I simply meant that some evolutionary biologist might give you a specific example of this, because the birdreptile was just something I used to describe the situation in general terms.

"Although a phylum is often spoken of as if it were a hard and fast entity, no satisfactory definition of a phylum exists"

With out a definition of these terms then biologists are really talking nonsense for with out definitions to locate and identify the things they talk about they are really not talking about anything at all If the biologist talks about say speciation or this species proving natural selection but cant tell you what a species or phylum is then he is talking meaningless nonsense. He could as easily said certain gibbles prove natural selection but with out knowing what a gibble is the claim is meaningless

Animal Kingdom can be split up into main groups, vertebrates (with a backbone) and invertebrates (without a backbone). When you think of an animal, you usually think of something like a cat, a dog, a mouse, or a tiger.

All told, around 800,000 species have been identified in the Animal Kingdom -- most of them in the Arthropod phylum.

In fact, some scientists believe that if we were to identify all species in the tropical rain forests the ranks of Arthropoda would swell to over 10 million species! Most people do not normally think of a clam, a jellyfish, or an earthworm as an animal.

Usually, a species is called by its genus name (capitalized) followed by its species name (lower case), so a human being is called Homo sapiens. In Latin that means "wise man."

To date there are five kingdoms: Animalia, which is made up of animals; Plantae, which is made up of plants; Protista, which is made up of protists (single-celled creatures invisible to the human eye); Fungi, which is made up of mushrooms, mold, yeast, lichen, etc; and Monera, which is made up of the three types of bacteria.

The next category is the Phylum. There are several phyla within each kingdom. The phyla start to break the animals (or plants, fungi, etc) into smaller and more recognizable groups. The best known phylum is Chordata, which contains all animals with backbones (fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians). There is also Arthropoda (insects, spiders, crustaceans); Mollusca (snails, squid, clam); Annelida (segmented worms); Echinodermata (starfish, sea urchins) and many, many more.

So, what is the problem? There are species, most of which can be easily classified. Some need more sophisticated means to place in their rightful species and then there is a small minority where it is difficult to determine the exact species of an organism. It is these difficult-to-define species (or groups of organisms if you like) that are maybe in the middle of speciation and thus difficult to tell apart.

If you consider the diversity of all living organisms, it is only to be expected that our methods to categorize all this aren't perfect. It still doesn't mean the term species is useless - quite to the contrary. For general purposes (and often even for advanced purposes) it works just well.

The bottom line is still, I think, that the nature doesn't give a damn whether you or I have difficulties in determining every single group of organisms the is into their correct species. The animals, plants and others are there. They belong to different groups morphologically, genetically, phenotypically and so forth. New species evolve, others cease to exist. No matter how much you try to deny it, evolution and natural selection take place.

"Although a phylum is often spoken of as if it were a hard and fast entity, no satisfactory definition of a phylum exists"

With out a definition of these terms then biologists are really talking nonsense for with out definitions to locate and identify the things they talk about they are really not talking about anything at all If the biologist talks about say speciation or this species proving natural selection but cant tell you what a species or phylum is then he is talking meaningless nonsense. He could as easily said certain gibbles prove natural selection but with out knowing what a gibble is the claim is meaningless